What's above is just the first minute and a half of David Letterman's monologue for tonight's show, which was taped today. In it, you'll see him poke fun at his in-the-doghouse status and acknowledge the rough weekend he had.

According to reports based on interviews with audience members, the show includes more explicit apologies to his staff and his wife than he offered up on Friday night, as well as acknowledgments that he's got ground to make up with everyone.

I feel about this largely the way I felt when he kept redoing his apology about this summer's Sarah Palin joke: the guy is sort of a compulsive pleaser, for someone who seems like a misanthrope. He pokes fun at himself thinking it's obvious that he's acknowledging his own error, he realizes people don't think it was enough, and he does it some more.

CBS has released a partial transcript, in which he says:

Now the other thing is my wife, Regina. She has been horribly hurt by my behavior, and when something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it's your responsibility, you try to fix it. And at that point, there's only two things that can happen: either you're going to make some progress and get it fixed, or you're going to fall short and perhaps not get it fixed, so let me tell you folks, I got my work cut out for me.

In this case, he's going back on something he said on Friday, which was that he wasn't going to say much more about it. I think the better part of valor would have been holding to that decision; I don't think the public expects to see him make apologies to his wife. (I certainly don't.) Explaining the situation before people read about it in the paper made some sense to me; this makes less sense. I think those who were inclined to butt their noses out of it did so on the assumption that he was, indeed, at home trying to make amends to his wife as needed. I'm not sure those people wanted him to do it in front of them.